michael moore: oscars, truths, and fictitions

Started by Rudie Obias, March 23, 2003, 09:27:38 PM

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Jeremy Blackman

from The Denver Post:

Harris, Klebold video to be released

The Jefferson County Sheriff's Office will publicly release Wednesday a video tape showing Columbine killers Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold target practicing with handguns, rifles and a shotgun.

The video, shot in the isolated Rampart Range area of Douglas County, was recorded on March 6, 1999, less than two months before the April 20, 1999, rampage at Columbine High School.

An illegal sawed-off shotgun shown and fired on the tape was used by Harris to kill four and wound seven at the high school.

Harris and Klebold killed 12 students and one teacher before taking their own lives.

Mark Manes and Philip Duran, who were convicted of selling weapons to the killers, were at the taped target practice. Shooters on the video tape used trees and bowling pins as targets.

MacGuffin

From Los Angeles Times:

Biting the hand that flies him
Michael Moore often lashes out at corporate America, but that's no reason to turn down Time Warner's jet for his new book tour.



GRASS VALLEY, Calif. — Michael Moore sat in the back seat of a black sedan moving silently along a dark, two-lane highway toward a private airfield ("a marijuana airstrip," Moore had joked) in the Sierra Nevada foothills.

A Time Warner jet awaited him. Moore, the controversial filmmaker behind the documentaries "Roger & Me" and the Academy Award-winning "Bowling for Columbine," was with a bodyguard, a driver and a reporter; an SUV containing the rest of his party followed. They included Moore's sister, Anne, who is a criminal defense attorney, two assistants and another bodyguard. Two other figures in the SUV — Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein — were lifelike but in fact the spawn of Photoshop and cardboard.

Moore is on a lecture/book tour for his latest satirical polemic, "Dude, Where's My Country?" He is barnstorming the country, trashing Republicans and corporate America and what he sees as President Bush's trumped-up, hypocritical war in Iraq.

In getting these messages out, Moore, the Flint, Mich., native and self-styled voice of the average worker, is also availing himself of corporate America's toys — SUVs and a private jet, provided by his publisher, Warner Books.

"I would never pay for this, let me just tell you that right now," Moore had said, earlier in the day, en route from Occidental College to Van Nuys Airport. Of the bodyguards, from Gavin de Becker & Associates, Moore said: "I'm grateful for the security because I want to get through this [tour] OK, and I know the country I live in."

For everything else he is, Moore is a guy who can move books: "Stupid White Men" which came out last year, has sold more than 4 million copies, and "Dude, Where's My Country?" on Sunday hit No. 1 on the Los Angeles Times and New York Times bestseller lists. So if a major publisher was going to supply him with a plane, to sell a book that bashed corporations while it made the corporation money, why not use it?

"Look, it's highly ironic, and the irony is not lost on me," Moore said. He continued to play around with the idea. Reporters in the past have confronted him about seeming contradictions between his public image and private life.

It's boilerplate by now, Moore's reaction indicates. He lives on the Upper West Side of Manhattan but wears Kmart-bought jeans.

"Don't take offense at this," Moore said. "When I've been interviewed in the past, it's rare that anyone from the working class would ask, 'How does the plane, the Town Car affect you?' The working class just thinks it's cool."

Hitting the campuses

Moore, 49, is reviled in some corners as a liberal propagandist, someone who cheats the truth in his movies. On this tour, which started Oct. 9, he is speaking mostly on college campuses, where his films are revered by 20-year-old cinéastes and his role as an oversized slacker-subversive plays well.

But the audience for "Dude, Where's My Country?" is broader, as it is for other anti-Bush administration harangues that are bestsellers alongside titles by conservative commentators Bill O'Reilly and Laura Ingraham. They include Al Franken's "Lies (and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them)" and "Bushwhacked" by Molly Ivins and Lou Dubose.

"It reflects the fact that the progressive, populist end of the spectrum has dusted itself off and realized that it really wants to be heard," Peter Osnos, chief executive and publisher at the independent house PublicAffairs Press, said of the mood being tapped by Moore, Franken, et al. Jillian Manus, a Republican and president of the literary agency Manus & Associates, says the controversial 2000 presidential election stoked the public's hunger for political discourse: "They want confirmation of their own beliefs, or they want criticism."

Having voted for Ralph Nader in 1996 and 2000, Moore says he hasn't decided whom he will support for president.

"Don't you think that I'd better serve the public by being on the outside and commenting on what's going on and trying to push the debate and try to bring up the issues and trying to keep them honest?" In New York, Moore was inside enough to meet with retired Gen. Wesley K. Clark at Rolling Stone magazine founder Jann Wenner's apartment, and with Vermont Gov. Howard Dean at an event thrown by actor Paul Newman and International Creative Management agent Boaty Boatwright.

The image of Moore accepted into polite society clashes with the on-screen provocateur lumbering into the lobby of a glass office in jeans and baseball cap, asking for a sit-down with a CEO. In his guerrilla-style work — which in addition to his films include the 1990s TV series "TV Nation" and "The Awful Truth" — he has taken victims of throat cancer to a tobacco company's headquarters and had them sing Christmas carols through their artificial voice boxes. In "Bowling for Columbine," he took two victims of the Columbine High School shooting to Kmart headquarters to return the bullets still lodged in their bodies.

Now, as the 2004 presidential election nears, Moore is using his book and his lectures and his next film, "Fahrenheit 9/11," to try to hound President Bush out of office. In a way, it's a campaign for our times: A leftist attacking big-media influences, using big media to convey his message. In the end, both the leftist and big media profit.

Like his previous films, "Fahrenheit 9/11," which Moore hopes to complete by the spring, is a documentary, but a documentary in the sense that it documents Moore's worldview. In the case of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, that worldview, essentially, goes as follows: The Bush administration cynically used the attacks to jam through a conservative agenda and sell a false war, based on false fears of an imminent terrorist threat, all of which left a host of more pertinent questions, eventually raised by the press, unanswered by the administration. "Is it true that the Bin Ladens have had business relations with you and your family off and on for the past 25 years?" is one of the "7 Questions for George of Arabia" Moore asks in his book.

Figuratively, anyway, Bush is Moore's new Roger Smith, the General Motors chairman and corporate villain he stalked in "Roger & Me."

"Thank you for letting me finish my Oscar speech," is something Moore has been saying to audience after audience on his lecture tour. The line gets a big laugh and Moore, make no mistake, finishes that speech. Back in March, of course, there were scattered boos and chagrined people in Vera Wang when Moore, holding his Oscar onstage at the Kodak Theatre, had his microphone cut as he shouted: "We live in the time where we have fictitious election results that elects a fictitious president. We live in a time where we have a man sending us to war for fictitious reasons. Whether it's the fiction of duct tape or fiction of orange alerts, we are against this war, Mr. Bush. Shame on you, Mr. Bush, shame on you."

In the months after the Oscars, Moore says, right-wing talk show hosts gave out his home number, and he couldn't walk the streets of Manhattan or use the subways without being confronted physically.

But now, he feels, given mounting U.S. troop casualties, and the fact that weapons of mass destruction have not been found in Hussein's arsenal, and charges that the president used faulty intelligence to push for war, things have changed.

"People now know we were lied to," Moore said. "What I said on that stage was the truth."

Support and scolding

On the jet, heading north to Grass Valley, Moore was eating a chef's salad brought him by a flight attendant. He had done more than three hours at Occidental, speaking and signing books, and would do another four hours that night at the Grass Valley War Memorial Auditorium. Anne Moore sat across the aisle. She is handling some of his press on this tour, handling her older brother. It seems important to have someone around Moore who agrees with his cause but has the power to scold him. Moore can't really be controlled; at times he's more like a giant adolescent, passionate and disarming but also motor-mouthed and oblivious to schedules.

"I got this great interview," Moore said, referring to a former FBI official he'd interviewed about the Al Qaeda terrorist cell for "Fahrenheit 9/11." "They don't let just anybody into their little club.... You make it into Al Qaeda, you get health care, paid vacations. Serious. Hilarious stuff. He was one of the point men on the whole Al Qaeda business," Moore said of the FBI guy.

The plane landed, took off again to avoid some pheasants, then landed again. In the SUV heading into Grass Valley, Moore said: "They can spin the one bad apple story all they want, but the truth, and the videotape that I have in my possession, which I can't speak too much of, shows that Bin Laden family members were supporting [Osama] right up until 9/11. They had contact with him right up until 9/11. The same ones benefiting from family relationships with Bush."

The event in Grass Valley, an old Gold Rush town, drew aging hippies, families, students from nearby colleges. Nevada County is majority Republican, Schwarzenegger country, but this was a liberal pocket. Moore entertained them, venting about weapons of mass destruction (the only ones Hussein had were the ones for which we have the receipts); Democratic presidential candidates ("I'm in the anyone-but-Lieberman camp") and, of course, conservatives (why are these angry white men so angry?).

Moore signed books for two hours, by which time it was midnight. The traveling Michael Moore Show was due back at the airfield, for a short flight to San Francisco. He will be at Cal State University San Marcos on Tuesday and at UCLA's Royce Hall on Nov. 22 and 23.

In the sedan back to the jet, Moore yawned. But he seemed satisfied. And he kept talking. He talked about his flaws ("I'm way too indecisive. I procrastinate for the longest time") and "Fahrenheit 9/11" ("It's not a conspiracy theory movie, it's investigative journalism in the vein of I.F. Stone") and about the amazing footage falling into his hands ("Word is out on the Internet that I'm making this film").

He talked about the crowd tonight — "schoolteachers and social workers and nurses. Boomers who haven't given up on their ideals, they've just gone out and worked."

Michael Moore's America. Or something like it.
"Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art." - Andy Warhol


Skeleton FilmWorks

NEON MERCURY

.."The Traveling Michael Moore Show"....i like that ..he is an act .nothing real.. all for show

..i do admit as a documentarian he is brilliant.
.as an American he is an embarrasment.....

Jeremy Blackman

Quote from: NEON MERCURY.as an American he is an embarrasment.....

More like an awkward merging of two worlds, at this point at least. His image is a little strange right now. He doesn't seem entirely comfortable.

NEON MERCURY

Quote from: Jeremy Blackman
Quote from: NEON MERCURY.as an American he is an embarrasment.....

More like an awkward merging of two worlds, at this point at least. His image is a little strange right now. He doesn't seem entirely comfortable.

..agree

godardian

:(



Oct. 29, 2003  |  DETROIT (AP) --

James Nichols, the brother of Oklahoma City bombing conspirator Terry Nichols, says he was tricked into appearing in the documentary "Bowling for Columbine," according to a federal lawsuit filed against filmmaker Michael Moore.

Nichols also alleges in the lawsuit, filed Monday in Detroit, that Moore libeled him by linking him to the terrorist act.

Nichols accuses Moore of libel, defamation of character, invasion of privacy and intentional infliction of emotional distress. His lawyer is asking for a jury trial and damages ranging from $10 million to $20 million on each of nine counts, the Detroit Free Press reported.

A message seeking comment was left Tuesday with Moore's publicist.

In the film, Moore asks Nichols for an interview and steers the subject from the Oklahoma City bombing to gun ownership. Nichols tells Moore he has a gun under his pillow, and Moore asks Nichols to show him.

In the lawsuit, Nichols, who lives in Decker, said Moore misled him about the purpose of the interview.

"Bowling for Columbine" won the feature-length documentary Academy Award earlier this year.
""Money doesn't come into it. It never has. I do what I do because it's all that I am." - Morrissey

"Lacan stressed more and more in his work the power and organizing principle of the symbolic, understood as the networks, social, cultural, and linguistic, into which a child is born. These precede the birth of a child, which is why Lacan can say that language is there from before the actual moment of birth. It is there in the social structures which are at play in the family and, of course, in the ideals, goals, and histories of the parents. This world of language can hardly be grasped by the newborn and yet it will act on the whole of the child's existence."

Stay informed on protecting your freedom of speech and civil rights.

Cecil


classical gas

Quote from: NEON MERCURY..
.as an American he is an embarrasment.....

why do you think that?  just curious...i think it's the opposite.  He's maybe more American than anyone.  does anyone like Bill Maher, btw??

classical gas

Quote from: NEON MERCURY..he is an act .nothing real.. all for show

i remember him saying the exact same thing, almost, about the people running our country....thought it to be funny and true.

Gamblour.

Quote from: classical gas
Quote from: NEON MERCURY..
.as an American he is an embarrasment.....

why do you think that?  just curious...i think it's the opposite.  He's maybe more American than anyone.  does anyone like Bill Maher, btw??

I love Bill Maher, except for his infatuation with PETA. They actually recommended eating roadkill as a proper way to eat meat. (I can get the link if you want it)

I'm glad Nichols is suing Moore. Not that I like this guy or anything (or think he isn't anything other than the craziest idiot out there) but what Nichols alleges sure seems right to me. Maybe they could revoke Moore's oscar because of this (please!). www.bowlingfortruth.com
WWPTAD?


Gold Trumpet

Quote from: classical gasdoes anyone like Bill Maher, btw??

Love love love love Bill Maher. His new show is the best on tv right now. And I like Moore, but I love Maher. Moore reminds me of Limbaugh in a lot of ways in that he will always be for one side and the loudest person for that side. I think that is why a lot of people are turned off by him. Maher mainly is for one side, but indepedent enough to go to the other side on issues and take boos from his own crowd so, like he says, he is keeping it "real".

~rougerum

Jeremy Blackman

This lawsuit has no merit. Nichols is going to have to explain himself. It's an interview... it can't really be slander unless Moore adds slanderous voiceover. Nichols can't slander himself and blame it on Moore. And.. it's going to be hard to prove that he was "tricked" into being interviewed or "tricked" into saying certain things, especially because the questions Moore asks are pretty obvious. It's not like he gave an interview about organic farming.

Quote from: Gamblor the Manwhorewww.bowlingfortruth.com

That site is ridiculous. It's subjective... for example... "Marilyn Manson is not smart and harmless... he's a psycho killer!" Any "facts" this site reveals are hardly earth-shattering:

True, the state of North Dakota did issue a permit to McWilliams to carry a concealed weapon. But, he is not totally blind. He is able to distinguish day from night, light from dark.

I laughed when I read that.

Gamblour.

Quote from: Jeremy BlackmanThis lawsuit has no merit. Nichols is going to have to explain himself. It's an interview... it can't really be slander unless Moore adds slanderous voiceover. Nichols can't slander himself and blame it on Moore. And.. it's going to be hard to prove that he was "tricked" into being interviewed or "tricked" into saying certain things, especially because the questions Moore asks are pretty obvious. It's not like he gave an interview about organic farming.

Quote from: Gamblor the Manwhorewww.bowlingfortruth.com

That site is ridiculous. It's subjective... for example... "Marilyn Manson is not smart and harmless... he's a psycho killer!" Any "facts" this site reveals are hardly earth-shattering:

True, the state of North Dakota did issue a permit to McWilliams to carry a concealed weapon. But, he is not totally blind. He is able to distinguish day from night, light from dark.

I laughed when I read that.

In the case of the lawsuit, it would be very interesting to see how they far it goes, if they rule that a film's tone can imply an attempt to slander.

As for the site, I haven't actually read it much of it, it did seem a little fanatical (except the About Us section). Which ever side of Bowling for Columbine anyone is on, it's all a little ridiculous. Moore's a little crazy, Heston's a little crazy. I probably sound like I'm changing my mind on what I said, but I'm a little crazy, I flop back and forth between liberal and conservative views daily. Some days I feel hardcore liberal, others I feel compelled to defend conservatives, but I always feel dirty afterwards.
WWPTAD?

Jeremy Blackman

Quote from: Gamblor the ManwhoreMoore's a little crazy, Heston's a little crazy.

That says it all. You have to be crazy on a crazy battlefield.